


The Weight of the World

by Tak



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Coma dream, Gen, Mass Effect 1, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Prophetic Dreams, coping with guilt, spiritual awakening
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2013-04-02
Packaged: 2017-12-07 06:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/745393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tak/pseuds/Tak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Weight of the World is my re-cap of the Mass effect Trilogy. Coupled with my burning desire to give my Shepard an ending that was fitting.<br/>I have expressed with in the story a few of my/sheps personal feelings and reflections to moments from the game.<br/>This was written before Citidel:DLC and I haven't changed anything to allow for it. This was written before I had played leviathan (happy coincidence that he uses the whole "you are death" line)</p>
<p>Thanks to Holly and Heather for Field testing the story.<br/>Thanks Heather for the name!<br/>Thank you Hana for getting me into this fandom!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weight of the World

Shepard gasped, consciousness returning to her damaged body.   
In her dreams she had seen the world, she had seen the reach her decision had.   
The red light exploded out ward through her, casting her aside like child throwing a toy that has lost favour, It spilled out into the universe. She saw it in her dreams, haunting images like she had seen the star child.   
She saw the end of the synthetics. Reapers falling dead and worse the Geth, the ships and EDI dying with them. Organics rejoicing across the galaxy; Humans, Taurian, Krogan, Geth, Asari even Salarian, Volis, Elcor Hanar and Drell. In her minds eye she had seen them all and more.   
She didn't give them the end the Star Child and Saren wanted. It wasn't the end that the Illusive man had wanted. It was the end Anderson and Shepard had been fighting for.  
The only end she felt in her soul they could work from.   
Her options had been simple:  
Control; Illusive mans choice was out of the question. It was only a matter of time before she lost her grip on reality. Shepard was not the best example of control an ex addict, with more than a temper issue, she didn't feel like she could do the universe any favours with those issues and control over a fleet of Reapers as a synthetic overlord.  
Synthesis; could have been an option. The end of the cycle, the fusion of all synthetic and organic life. Peace; but a peace with out choice. Synthesis is something the universe should strive for, a choice they should all come together to agree upon. Something she prayed in generations they could work towards.  
Or the only option that felt right. The red wave, destruction. Ending the reapers ripping out any life they had and taking synthetic with them.

Groaning the words of the child rattled through her scull.   
"Remember even you are synthetic in part."   
Pain, consciousness was pain. Thinking was pain, breathing was pain. She knew she had to try move, find a radio find something to try and make contact.   
Rolling, reaching out a blood stained hand, pushing aside debris and bodies. Unsure where exactly she was. The citadel had been the last place she remembered. Firing the crucible and sitting back next to Anderson. He died thinking they had succeeded. Died proud of Shepard, she wasn't going to let her old friend down.   
Hauling herself to her hands and knees, accepting the pain as a state of existence, barely remembering a moment with out it.   
There was once a time, when she still felt able to take on the universe, running to the Conduit.   
"Oh god" she whispered to her self "Kaidan." Last moments with him were burned in her memory.   
"Im with you to the end...don't leave me behind."   
His words ate at her. For so long this was to be her final mission. A Fitting end for a Soldier that had fought so hard for so long.  
She had kissed him on the edge of the battlefield covered in sweat, blood and mud for a split second becoming deaf to the destruction around her.   
"Im coming back, I love you."   
She knew the odds, and had never expected to live but in that moment she had made a promise. There was no power in this universe that could make her break that.   
The gauntlet of her armour was missing from the right arm, her omni tool as well.   
She made it to her feet.   
"One step at a time girl." She told herself.   
There it was glowing just out of reach, two more steps and she could grab it.  
She fell. Breath escaped her lungs as she hit the ground hard, struggling to regain air but it was like her lungs were not her own. Her left hand remained at her side holding the wound, attempting to staunch the blood. She stretched out. Inching towards the omni tool and her connection to the out side world. A gloved hand touched it, a finger scrapped at the edge trying to pull it closer. It rocked, then rolled and she got her hand around it. She pulled it close cradling it. The last of her energy leaving her she opened up a channel. Didn't know who too, and all she heard was static as she slipped into unconsciousness again.  
She was jarred awake by a nightmare, a nightmare that shouldn't be haunting her anymore but some habits even unconscious ones are hard to break. The static had stopped.   
"Hello?" She called tentatively into the com, "Hello? Joker this would be a great time for you to be sitting in that big plush pilots chair. Doing nothing but listening into the radio waves."  
Dead air.  
Shepard laughed "After all this I'm not going to bloody bleed to death on the citadel floor. So help me if I have to drag my sorry ass to Earth, some how."   
***  
The crew stood solemnly at the memorial wall. Those who survived paying tribute to those that didn't. Legions name was on the wall from the collector base, Joker had already paced a plaque for EDI shortly after the red wave.   
It was one of the hardest things he had had to do, and now they waited on Kaidan.  
Commander Sheaprd, was all it read. Kaidan looked at the metal plaque turning the cold silver metal over in his hands. It wasn't enough. It wasn't her, lifeless metal was nothing on the real woman but with out a body it was all they could do.   
He gripped it tightly, looking skyward lost in memories hesitating that little bit longer. Joker put a hand on his shoulder. A tiny gesture of support considering what it meant as soon as that plaque touched the wall.   
"She promised me." Kaidan said quietly.  
"Don't put it up then." Joker said "Not to day. Give it more time."  
Kaidan looked at him as Joker held out his hand for it, he was reluctant to hand it over as if he was holding on to all that was left her.  
Joker took the Plaque. "I'll keep it safe until your ready."   
Joker limped to the cockpit. Every one else had started to disband they could only stand at that wall for so long before the weight of the tribute got to them all. Kaidan remained in front of it lost in his own thoughts. Joker sighed, loosing the woman you love twice had to be horrible. Kaidan didn't take it well the first time, but then he had watched it happen, they all had. This time there was no proof Shepard had died, no body, not even a chance to look properly, they had just lost contact. Joker wasn't sure if straight up denial was better way to cope, but he was still functioning. What ever got him though the day.  
Joker was philosophical about it all. When the red wave hit, EDI dropped dead. There was no twitching, no drama, she was on one minute and off the next. Just like the ships, just like everything. Only she never came back on line.   
He approached the cockpit. Empty save for his chair, silent and the only light coming from the various screens and control panels.  
"After all this I'm not going to bloody bleed to death on the citadel floor. So help me if I have to drag my sorry ass to earth, some how."   
His body went cold. Faintly, past the static was her voice through the air waves, the cockpit was quiet again for a moment quiet enough to hear the clatter of her plaque hit the deck. He moved as quick as he was able to his chair.  
"Shepard?" His voice was barley audible the shock tightening his vocal chords.  
"Joker? Joker, oh god I have never been happier to hear your voice." She was panting. Her words breathless, she was wounded.  
"How, no. Where are you?" He stammered.   
"Still on the Citadel. Me and a pile of dead bodies." Her humour wavered for a moment. "Bailey's probably here, Kolyat, Kasumi, god damn all of them." Breathing in sharply, her breath shuddering.   
"Don't think about that now. I'll inform the search party, Can you hold on?" He asked softly  
"Held on this long didn't I?" 

Joker sent for Kaiden, and Garrus. Replay the transmission twice to disbelieving ears, even Kaidan, the last man holding onto hope was shocked.   
With the knowledge sinking in they were quick to move. Getting them selves ready while the Normandy made jump back to earth and the Citadel hanging over London.   
"Joker." Shepard's voice was a whisper through the Lonely cockpit, she sounded distant as if she was talking more to herself. "Jeff. Im sorry. I am so very sorry." She was speaking between breaths "I'm sorry about EDI, it was the only" she paused "the only way that seemed right."   
He paused for a minute looking at the blinking light of the com system. "How did you know about EDI?"  
"Its on me, All of it. I know what she was to you, who she was to you. And I chose..." Her voice cut off. Jokers brow furrowed as he concentrated on docking with a broken Citadel, pushing the thoughts from his mind. 

Docking Kaidan and Garrus had to steel themselves against the shear volume of death they witnessed. The makeshift refugee housing every thing and every one abolished. Only the Keepers the ancient care takers of the re-usable trap that was the Citadel, remained sifting through the death, clearing paths disposing of bodies.   
"We have to find Shepard in all this?" Garrus said signalling to the debris.   
"We've pulled her out of worse." Kaidan assured him. He was scanning with his omni tool the orange of the holographic image casting an eery glow amongst the destruction. "Lets try and head up to the tower."  
"Seems fitting isn't that where she ended up after the battle with Saren." Garrus laughed.   
"Complete the cycle." Kaidan said off hand making his way to the presidium steps.   
The once beautiful city scape reduced to ruin, white marble like steps chard and speckled with dirt, step after step they walked, passed body after body, even the trees were stained with soot and blood. The third flight of steps he began to see a clearing. The Keepers had been hard at work in this area, it almost looked like new. There in the middle of the oasis of death was a sight he thought he would never see again. He saw her boots first. Gun metal grey, filthy, her steps dragging like her foot prints slowly smearing across the freshy clean tiles. Her armour, chipped battered and bloody her body told no lies about the battle she had fought. She clutched her side, wincing with every shuffle. Her face was bruised and swollen.  
"Kaidan?" She cried out to him quietly questioning her eyes praying it wasn't some cruel trick of her blood deprived mind. Taking a step faster than she was able, she tested her sanity with a louder shout "Kaidan!" Her knees gave out under her.  
He sprinted the last few steps, sliding to catch her before she hit the ground.   
"I knew you were alive." He whispered pushing her hair back from her face "I knew it."  
"I made a promise." she said weakly "Didn't want to disappoint."  
"Never." He held her close to him for a minute. The allowing the sense of relief to flood over him. Shepard closed her eyes and relaxed into his arms. Her nose resting against his neck.  
Garrus followed quickly behind "That bar in the sky wasn't good enough for you?" He joked   
"Nothing to drink." Shepard told him with out opening an eye  
"More like they kicked you out." He corrected  
"I'm no angel." She was still coherent but her voice was getting quieter with each word like something was slowly pulling the air from her lungs. Kaidan picked her up and carried her back down the steps, back to the Normandy.  
"Don't get to use to this." She whispered, her strength still holding with her humour.  
"No, no" he said and smiled "I promise to go back to being the damsel in distress just as soon as your better."  
"good you're better at it than me."  
***  
Pacing outside the medical bay Kaidan's worries were mounting, there had been no word from Chakwas since he had brought Shepard in. Garrus had disappeared, hiding concern in calibrations. Most of the crew had made them selves busy figuring they were unable to influence the out come. It was all in the doctors hands now.   
Kaidan couldn't bring himself to do anything, his mind was with Shepard.   
He waited for news.  
Dr Chakwas finally emerged, her face looking grim. Kaidan was already preparing for the worst, his mind reliving the destruction of the Normandy, burying Shepard, remembering how much it hurt to see her face on everything, memorials, Promotional material, that damned VI.   
"She's holding on." She told him, ushering him towards the seats in the Mess, "but barely. What ever the red beam was, it shut down all the cybernetic enhancements that were keeping her alive. I swear she's staying alive out of shear force of will."  
"The Lazarus project." Kaidan said racking his brains for an idea "If we can fix what they did." He began to move, his body taking action before his brain finished forming the thought.  
"We can only try." Chakwas said, catching his arm "Its touch and go in there, not that I'm doubting Shepard's tenacity in any way, but you might want to see her before you leave. Just in case."  
His brow furrowed deeply "I will, but for my own sanity I'm going to pretend like I didn't just hear you say that."

Quietly he entered Medical bay. Finally after hours of waiting. He almost wished he hadn't. Stripped of her armour he could see the extent of the damage. The armour had protected her for the most part. She was heavily bruised with only a few instances where any fire got through to her flesh. Those areas were bandaged, blood still visible seeping through. Tubes ran in and out of her providing her with all the things necessary to live, for the first time in all the years he knew Shepard, she looked fragile. Her worse injuries were internal the cybernetics that had shut down had forced her onto external life support.   
There was a machine to help her breathe, one to monitor her heart, An IV and more. He stood next to the bed the only sound in the room was the steady beep of the heart monitor, and the gasp of the ventilator.  
He touched her hand. Running his fingers over her palm before holding it and kneeling next to her kissing her fingers.  
He said nothing but rested his head on the bed. Trying to think through the fog clouding his brain.  
"Miranda Lawson." Said the gentle knowing voice behind him. He looked back to see Liara leaning against one of the other beds. "Dr Chakwas said that you were thinking of investigating the Lazarus project as a way to save her. So Miranda Lawson is the Woman you want to find. She headed the operation and she owes Shepard a favour or two."  
"How do you know all this?"   
"Two reasons." The young Asari said pushing her self to standing fixing him with her bright blue eyes that matched her skin. "I am the Shadow Broker, and after the collector attack on the SR1, I secured Shepard's body for her."  
"You?" He asked taken aback by her honest declaration. "You handed her over to Cerberus. You gave Shepard to a known terrorist cell. You..."  
"Were instrumental in the resurrection of Commander Shepard, first human Spector and only woman proven to be our salvation from the Reapers." She cut him off swiftly "Kaidan I respect you, you're a good man, but if we did everything your way, we would have fallen to the Collectors and Shepard would still be dead." She lay a hand on his shoulder, "Miranda is no longer Cerberus, she's your best chance."   
Kaidan took all the information Liara had to offer. Miranda was still on earth with her sister, still in London. After the incident with her father she was being more careful to hide herself. Liara promised to look for further information while he investigated planet side.  
***  
"Romeo wait up." Vega called out to Kaidan, as he was prepping a shuttle. "I want to come with."   
Kaidan looked at the Lieutenant disapprovingly, pet names were something Shepard let him get away with. He didn't realise he had gotten a one in the process.  
"I don't think..." He began,  
"You need some one who's willing to play bad cop to your good cop." Vega interrupted   
"And, I owe her, you know."   
Kaidan smirked, Vega was a little over zealous but genuine, he stood aside.   
"Get in." He said finally.   
"Hey Esteban," Vega called out to Cortez "Looks like I'm keeping you and the Major company for the trip."   
Kaidan shook his head, at least with James on board it wouldn't be quiet.

Vega was good for keeping his mind off things, he regaled Kaidan with a cheerful banter he was thankful for. It kept the trip short.   
They landed in London for the second time. The devastation from the fight with the Reapers was still evident. Most areas were off limits to civilians still, as military and emergency personal were attempting to secure and clear more dangerous pieces of rubble.  
"You don't think I can play bad cop?" He asked making small talk while they picked passed some familiar streets now thankfully devoid of enemies.  
"I've played you in poker, and your good, but your face is too honest. It's where you and Lola made a good team." Vega laughed "When she gets out her angry face, I swear my toes curl."  
Kaidan laughed with him "I hear she is more prone to kicking people out of windows than I am."  
"And shes got a killer left jab. You don't sass her during a sparring match if you still want all your teeth, you know?"  
"You sparred with Commander Tak Shepard and thought you'd come out with all your teeth?" Kaidan said letting him pass for a minute. "Our Commander, the first human Spector and top Vanguard?"   
"Yeah exactly, Vanguard. You biotic lot get soft in the hand to hand, I thought she'd be easy. I didn't know she was the Red's top street fighter."   
Kaidan thought for a minute. "The Tenth street Reds? That earth gang the Alliance was having issue with a few years ago?"   
"Yeah man, Lola and her sister use to run with them. Blew the Scarlett hotel to hell on their way out." Vega saw the confused look on Kaidan's face "Sorry I thought you knew."  
"She told me her family was dead."   
Vega sighed "Well they are now."   
Kaidan ran a hand through his hair. Had he really missed that much? Did Horizon put enough distance between them that he no longer knew her?  
"Don't worry man, she's not suppose to talk about it." Vega explained cutting through his thoughts, "Alliance don't like too much back story in their operatives."   
"She told you."  
"Me and Lola, we share a few similarities in our childhood." He walked back to Kaidan clapping him reassuringly on the shoulder. "That's all." The lieutenant carried on walking forward picking his way through the debris. "The way I figure it." He continued "You guys survived a lot together, and Lola she thinks the world of you. She probably didn't want you to think any less of her."  
***  
The ship was at ease for the evening. They had docked with an Alliance dreadnought while Shepard was being sorted out. The Brass and the Council were arguing about how to deal with her, along with how to deal with the fall out of the Reapers.   
Joker sat in the medical bay with Shepard's unconscious body.   
Kaidan was out playing hero, and just like last time Joker had to wait and watch.  
"Shepard." He said out loud, after checking no one was in earshot. "You can't die. I don't think the universe will give you another redo. Even for you." He dragged his chair forward to sit closer to her, the legs scraping along the ground echoing in the empty sterile room. She was so still for some one who hours ago had been conscious and talking.  
"I know there was a time there for a while you thought you were better off dead, but I've got a big list of purely selfish reasons for you to stay alive."  
He swallowed a lump in his throat. No amount of pleading was going to change anything. He was never sure why people talked to coma patients before, he still didn't. He kind of hoped she couldn't hear every thing that was going on.   
In truth his one prayer was that he hoped in her mind she could have a break for once. She had earned it.  
***  
Tak Shepard stood in front of the large viewing window.   
She stared long and hard out into space searching each blip of light for a hint of where earth was. The spiral of the Milky Way, the familiar cluster of nine planets that made up her solar system, from way out here they all looked the same. All tiny pin pricks of light whizzing past.  
She could just hear the conversation going on in the room next to her. Udina's voice was loud and angry, as it always was when ever her name was mentioned.   
"Well, what about Shepard? Earthborn - but no record of her family."  
Softly with a calm, gentle and deep resonance, General Anderson responded "Doesn't have one. She grew up on the streets, learned to look out for herself."  
Udina retorted "What about her psychological profile." It was less of a question and more of a statement. Since the giant worm like Thresher Maw had ripped through her squad leaving only herself sifting through the death, many had treated her like she was some sort of loose cannon, like a old leaky dam, the ebb and flow of the river about ready to shatter and release upon the universe. Shepard was in fact a vault, a solid impenetrable strong hold of her feelings.   
"She saw her whole unit get wiped out on Akuze. She could have some serious emotional scars." Hackett's growl was barely audible through the wall.  
"Every soldier has scars. Shepard's a survivor." Again Anderson came to her defence  
Udina scoffed "Is that the kind of person we want protecting the galaxy?"  
"That's the only kind of person who can protect the galaxy." Anderson bit back  
"I'll make that call." Undina snapped.  
A voice calm and feminine broke up her thoughts.   
I see your skin, tough as the scales on any turian, unyielding. A wall between you and everyone else. But it protects you, makes you strong.That strength is what kept you alive when everyone around you was dying. You alone survived. You will continue to survive.  
Tak's dreams were no more than memories. Of a time when she still believed in the good in people, and that all trials could be beaten if she worked hard.  
She was so naive then, despite everything. A spectre and Alliance soldier, she shouldered these responsibilities with pride. Even the knowledge in the Prothean beacon, despite the nightmares, the shocking flesh and metal images, she believed it was her duty. To sacrifice herself before she lost another life. 

The vision moved.

She could see her self leaning over the weapons bay in the Normandy. No Ashley just weapons.  
"It was the only five minutes you let your self grieve." Came the strong matter of fact voice behind her.  
She spun around. "Ash?" Any other words caught in her throat.  
"I feel special, I got five minutes. That's five minutes more than any of the others."  
Shepard's mouth hung open,  
"Shut your mouth Skipper, after everything you've been through you're having trouble believing this?" Ashley told her. Nothing had changed in her comrades face, sun kissed skin and dark hair and eyes still bright, energetic, unmarred even in her late twenties. Of course that is the gift of dying young, eternal youth.   
"Just trying to figure out what you are? A ghost? A memory, an angel? Maybe I had more brain trauma than I thought." Shepard muttered,  
Ash laughed "That's a memory." She nodded over to the grieving Shepard.  
She shook her head "Ash I'm so sorry. I should have found a way I should have..."  
"What? Chosen me over Kaidan, no, the powers at be had made it so there was only one way out of that mission. That bomb had to go off, and I wasn't the woman for the job."  
Shepard shook her head "I let feelings get in the way."   
"We were friends right?"   
Shepard nodded.  
"And alright I'll admit it, I wasn't trying to jump your bones but feelings were in the way which ever way you chose." She smiled. "It's a hazard of being nice to your crew."  
Shepard smiled it was good seeing her again, even if she was just a representation of all the guilt that had been building up inside her. "Chief you got some sass in death."   
"I was always sassy Commander, now you don't out rank me." She laughed, walking through the engine room bay doors urging Shepard to follow her into Peak 15 snow capped facility.   
Icicles from out sides snow, seeped inside the room, matriarch Banezia's death still fresh, her body and the body of Saren's Geth servants and Banezia's own Asari commandoes littered the lab.   
The Rachnei queen lumbering insectoid form trapped in her containment unit.  
"You saved people, this queen, the Colonists on Noveria." Ashley told her.  
"They sing." Shepard said softly, musing over what had happened like she was watching a play, watching herself Kaidan and Wrex talking to the proxy of the Rachnei queen. "I killed Liara's mother, and let live an alien queen whose species had decimated hundreds of worlds. Because she sings."   
"She sang a song of peace, and she was true to her word was she not?" Ashley lay hand on her shoulder.  
"Until indoctrination. Until the Reaper's took her and used her to pump out thousands of corrupted Rachnei slaves. "  
"And once she was freed? When you and grunt found her and saved her? Her new generation of Rachnei helped build the crucible."   
The memory figments began to leave the area, Shepard and Ashley followed them "That wasn't until well after you died, how do you know?"   
Ashley smiled knowingly and as they passed through the door they were back on the Normandy.  
The mess area and crew deck were empty locked into the Citadel by order of Udina, the perpetual thorn in Shepard's Side, the crew had become like ghosts. Shepard saw herself with the lockers, letting her frustrations out on the unbending metal. Helpless against the council and order.  
Kaidan entered and began talking to her as she sat down on the floor.  
"You two are sweet together." Ashley commented "You could cut the sexual tension with spoon"  
Shepard laughed "It gets worse, wait for it."  
They watched Kaidan offer his hand to help her up. She clasped it tight, at the time she hadn't realised why it had felt strange, why her heart decided to do jumping jacks in her chest. Shepard watched her hand in his, her fingers testing his skin, she remembered that was the first time in along time she had felt the uncovered flesh of another human being. She stumbled, fell against his chest, his arms came around her. She turned her face towards him and his turned towards her. Shepard watched as her memory self's eyes darted between his lips and his eyes. As they slowly moved closer and closer.  
And the call came from Joker.  
"Cock blocked by the pilot." Ashley exclaimed, as the memory changed almost seamlessly, one image of the Normandy interior to the next.

The night before Ilos.   
The cabin in the SR1 tiny, one bed, one desk, just enough room to stretch if you had to.   
At the time Ilos was their most dangerous mission, they had stolen the Normandy, had to reach the conduit before Saren.   
Mission; Stop Saren, Stop Sovereign, get to the Conduit, all while looking down the barrel of a court marshal.   
The impending fraternisation seemed only natural.   
"What have we here?" Ashley said gleefully.   
Shepard had almost forgotten about her dream guide as she was lost in thought. "You don't have to watch this." She said holding up a hand to cover her friends eyes.   
Ashley struggled for a minute then sighed. "Oh alright," she turned to face the wall.  
Shepard felt her skin began to warm as Kaidan entered her room, that night was the start of something that would take years to finish. Her own memories had been vivid enough to keep her warm at night in the time they were separated.  
She could remember how he felt. His hands trailing up her sides, his lips on hers, on her neck,and her body. how he tasted and felt. How much she loved him in that moment.  
"We'll take your time why don't you."   
Ashley's words snapped her and the memory away.   
Forcing the scene of her self emerging from the wreckage of the citadel after the final fight with a fully mutated and indoctrinated Saren.   
At first nothing more than a hand jutting out from the rubble until she could grip the pillar that blocked her path and heaved her out of he way. Dragging her self upwards and outward to Wrex, Kaidan and Anderson awaiting her.  
"You instated Anderson to the council. Good move." Ashley mused. "Saved the council, saved the galaxy for another day."  
"I still let you die." She told her spirit guide solemnly.  
"I like to think that, it lead towards this greater good!" She said and smiled the images melting to the ink of space as they talked. The white walls of the citadel the bright clear light became pitch. Cold and dark like a voided hell. The Normandy hung in dark, like a toy ship bobbing in a child's tub, the collectors ship making a splash, dwarfing the Alliance vessel.  
Shepard saw the beam like a light house beacon cutting through the darkness with its orange fury. The double reinforced, most technologically advanced ship in the fleet was cleaved in half effortlessly, like the beam was a hot knife, and the Normandy butter.   
"I went back for Joker." Shepard whispered softly, though they were watching the carnage from the out side, she remembered the panic she had felt inside as the fire began erupting, air was sucked out through broken seals and demolished walls. She had known Joker wouldn't leave the Normandy, he loved the SR1 like it was a living breathing creature. Shepard had too, the way she ran, the way she purred. Her walls and sounds had been home.  
"Kaidan and I, we argued about it. I didn't know that would be the last words between us."  
Ashley shrugged and placed a hand on her shoulder again. It wasn't comforting as before she held her with an unnatural strength. Her second hand took her other shoulder facing Shepard watching her with now cold lifeless eyes. Shepard began to panic.   
Suddenly she couldn't breathe. Glancing frantically around she saw herself floating in space struggling as the air was escaping her torn suit. She was gasping both in the memory and out. Collapsing to her knees she looked up at Ashley.   
No thoughts came into her head, no famous last words all she could whisper as she collapsed into the darkness was "I'm sorry."  
***  
"Hello!" Vega announced excitedly as they entered the civilian refugee camp, on the out skirts of town, he had caught sight of the back end of a curvaceous young female informant, the skintight black and white outfit leaving little to chance with her shape and physique. The woman appeared to be directing a small contingent of Alliance soldiers. The plans for the relief effort were spread across tables, another young woman very similar to the first was pouring her self over the manuscripts and maps. The soldiers vacated the tent. She turned to greet the new comers with no surprise, as if she had always known they were there.  
"Miss Lawson?" Kaidan questioned.  
"Major." She said plainly, not moving to acknowledge them any further.  
"You two know each other?" Vega questioned looking from one the the other.  
Miranda smiled "I had the pleasure of meeting the Major on Horizon, after the Collector attack. Though it wasn't much of a meeting as the Major was busy expressing his disgust in Cerberus."  
"I wasn't wrong was I?" Kaidan kept a cool steady stare.   
Miranda raised an eyebrow "No, Shepard didn't trust them either. Means to an end she would say." She signed finally giving up trying to stare the Major down and looking back to her sister "As you can see now, that chapter of my life is done. So what is it I can do for you?"  
"Lazuras project." Kaidan said slowly  
Miranda lent on the table. Letting her head hang. "You can't just leave her dead and let her rest?"  
"She didn't die!" Vega blurted out. "That's the crazy thing, she came out alive. Had the shit kicked out of her but she's still going."  
Miranda looked up, her brow furrowed in disbelief even her sister Oriana stopped, dropping her pen to the table with a small clatter.  
Kaidan nodded "It's true, but she's..." his voice trailed off he couldn't even say the word dying. "We think the red beam has effected what ever was done to her as part of your project. I'm told you owe Shepard a favour."   
Miranda looked to her sister, she owed Commander Shepard more than just a favour. She owed her sisters life and as of recently her own.  
"The Lazuras project took 2 years, 4 billion dollars, an elite team of scientists and more technology than you could imagine. What makes think this is a viable idea."  
Kaidan sighed unsure what to say to convince her.  
"Well" Vega interrupted "Surely this time it's easier. I mean she's not even dead."  
***  
Shepard awoke as if she was tuning into to a tv station, the black slowly focusing into an image of the Cerberus lab. She saw her self sit up on the sterile table.   
"Oh god not more of this." She moaned, watching her self cope with the rude awakening, her new life started with.  
"Shepard Commander?"   
Shepard jumped at the metallic resounding voice. She turned slowly to face the Geth, his mat silver body reflecting the cold sterility of the room, his singular light in the curved almost serpentine head beaming at her, the hole in his chest covered by her old broken N7 armour.   
"Legion? How are you...?"   
Ashley as a spirit guide was understandable but Legion? He was sentient sure, but still Geth, still a robot.  
"Are you not in part synthetic?" His comment more rhetorical, though his tone as usual conveyed almost no emotion. "I feel certain parts of your synapses are firing enough, just to keep the fractured memory banks alive. In there you have your own copy of my consciousness, and as my conscious is nothing but data, it is then quite logical for me to be here."  
Shepard nodded gently for a while. "Uh huh." She grunted looked at him blankly for a time. Noticing that the play of her life was still moving forward In the background.  
She scoffed watching as she helped Jacob and Miranda clear the Cerberus base of insurgents. No rest for the wicked.  
"You know to me, it was just like I had taken a nap. Closed my eyes for a minute and BAM back in to the Frey." She mused.  
"I often wondered Shepard Commander why the Illusive man spent so much money trying to bring you back specifically." The figure of Legion moved through the facilities cargo bay door. "Your culture puts such stock in those that have been resurrected. Surely any dead soldier would suffice?"   
Shepard looked at the Geth stunned by the question. "The Illusive man thought I was special, something with how I had survived Akuze, the gangs on earth, Saren and Sovereign."  
"Your instinct to live maybe?" The automaton offered up.  
Shepard was looking through to the docking bay now ignoring Legions words. Her memory of this moment was pristine and she was excited. It was her first friendly face.  
"Joker!" She cried out in unison with her self from the memory.  
She had been so happy to see him at first she didn't notice that he was walking with out crutches. All be it not fast. She had hugged him, maybe a little too long in that moment. Separated only by the unveiling of the normandy SR2, in real life she had stood in awe with Joker, watching her the SR2 for the first time. This time she pressed her nose against the glass emotion catching in her throat as the familiar ship glistened under the lights. Similar yet so different. Rebuilt in the image of what it was once was but with Cerberus fingerprints all over it, just like Shepard's own body. No wonder Kaidan was wary of her.  
"It's amusing that, you can have feelings for a machine as you would for a friend. Yet so many organics have issue with synthetic life."   
Shepard turned and leaned against the glass, "She served us well. Kept us safe. She died with me. Was rebuilt with me. She's a part of me."   
"Yet you chose to kill that part of you." Again there was no malice in his tone, all Legions words were, was a simple statement. Words still cut her to the bone weather they were intended to or not.  
"No I chose to destroy the Reapers. The rest were casualties of war." She snapped "It's horrible, but war is horrible Legion. Some times you have to do horrible things to win those wars. No one knows that more than me."  
Spurring change, her words disolved metal walls and cold fluorescent lights to the dry yellow expanse of Horizon.  
"Do we have to do this?" She asked Legion a ball of tension growing in her gut while she watched the swarmers mass over head, knowing what Horizon meant.

The Horizon mission had been a trap. She knew it the moment the Illusive man had opened his mouth. He knew the one person to bait her with. The one person that she would forsake any sanity to go to. Who she would fight and slaughter hordes of Collectors for.  
Observing the memory of her self she could watch the look on her face as Kaidan finally appeared. She didn't cry out, she didn't run to him.   
She should have.   
It should have been a happy reunion. 2 years for him, 2 years and her death lay between them she couldn't grasp how that felt. Just like he couldn't grasp that for her it was no time at all.   
"Commander Shepard. Captain of the Normandy. The first human Spectre. Saviour of the Citadel. You're in the presence of a legend, Delan and a ghost." Hearing his voice squeezed her heart, leaving her at a loss for words.   
He had changed, in ways that only a person who spent months thinking of the same face would notice. A little older, a little more stern.   
"Just hug him and say nothing." Shepard pleaded with her self walking closer to the memory than she had before. Standing between them.  
"I thought you were dead, Shepard. We all did." He began  
"You don't sound too happy to see me. Something bothering you, Kaidan?"   
She took a deep breath, " Commander Shepard your a fool." She told herself in retrospect. Watching him immediately go on the defensive. She shook her head observing the argument from the out side she thought she could stay objective, but that was a joke.   
"I thought we had something, Shepard. Something real. I... I loved you. Thinking you were dead tore me apart. How could you put me through that? Why didn't you try to contact me? Why didn't you let me know you were alive?" There was pain in his words past the anger. A hurt that Shepard her self shared.   
"Why didn't the Alliance try and bring me back?" Began her whisper "Why wasn't it you, not Liara that found my body and fought to get it to live again." The true question burning in her "How could you leave me dead?" She shouted to deaf ears, before her memory self said anything else.   
Her only thought since consciousness had been of him, to find him to see him. He complained about being stone walled about Cerberus, the Alliance blocking him at every turn. It had been the same for her. She was kept in a void of information, they wanted her to run around on their schedule, so they played her like a pupped with the information they had.  
"You turned your back on everything we believed in. You betrayed the Alliance. You betrayed me."   
That word "betrayed" hit her like a smack to the face. Her memories face shifted like a wave came over her. The stone defence, her face relaxed became devoid of all emotion. She met his gaze with an icy one of her own.  
"I can see you won't listen to reason" her memory said to him  
"Neither will you." She told herself "both of us are as stubborn as the other."  
She tried to touch him but he was just a memory.  
" Goodbye, Shepard. And be careful" he walked away.   
Memory Shepard did the same.  
"Turn around. Go back." She shouted at her self "Do something! Don't let him walk away you coward. You'll regret it! every day. Please!" But nothing. She could change the past about as much as she could change the future.

Sun and ground dissolved into darkness and metallic surroundings. The quite surrounding of a planet after war replaced by loud boisterous music. Empty expanses now filled with people, of all colours, all creeds.  
Tak Shepard sat next to herself and her guide Legion at a table just off to the side of the bar. The knowledge of if she was on Omega or the Citadel eluded her T'was the nature of the drink.  
She had been dry so long. It was almost a waste to fall of the wagon now.  
She signalled to the bar tender for another drink. Cerberus paid her well she could afford it.  
Tak looked at the recollection of herself drowning in her own weights worth of whiskey.  
"I was alway just a hares breath away from falling off the wagon again." She said.  
"The wagon?" Legion asked confused by the reference.  
"Sobriety. I hadn't touched a drop since I joined the academy." She laughed "The reason why the brass know about my history is because at the very first drug test, I told them I wasn't going to pass."   
Legion said nothing, and it was hard to tell if he was even listening, though what she assumed was his face was pointing at her, while they sat next to the memory of her drunken self.  
"I turned up to my CO, told him I only just started detox and I had another month until it was all out of my system."   
"You got away with it?"   
Shepard nodded, condition was she had to prove she was worth it. Every day for that next month she never missed an assignment, never missed a day, even when the nausea hit, or when the shakes started, when her joints ached, and mind felt on fire. She soldiered on, and here she was 12 years later quenching her sorrows in liquor.  
"I think he felt sorry for me, Hallex withdrawals are horrible." She answered.  
In the memory she got up and headed for the door, but was stopped by a rambunctious mercenary.  
"Where you going love?" He said his 2 other buddies surrounding Shepard.  
"I'm not in the mood to play boys." She growled darkly, her words still clipped despite the liquor.  
"I don't think you have much of a choice." The merc chuckled to his friends.  
"You have no idea who I am do you?" Shepard asked   
"Not a clue," he leaned into her personal space. "Why?"  
She pulled back and punched him. Knocking him back, his first buddy took a swing at her which she caught parried across her body exposing his elbow. She struck upwards with her free arm shattering it on impact, then shoving him out of the way. The second friend had the smarts to pull a gun on her. Grabbing the gun at the grip, over his hands, side stepping out of the firing line. With her left and on his, her right under the barrel of the gun she trapped his hand and turned it towards himself as he fired. She let him go, allowing him to collapse into a quivering heap. Picking up the instigator of the mess by the throat she slammed him onto his back on the table. Shepard and Legion had the best seats in the house for this memory, the mercenary sliding across the table between them.  
"Because I'm Commander Fucking Shepard and its in your best interest to leave me the fuck alone."  
She looked from the scene on the table in front of her, to Legion at her side. "Not my most eloquent of moments."

The bar collapsed into the blackness of space, As a fiery sun came into view. A reflective floor and a chair were the only components of the room.The Illusive mans familiar silhouette was framed by the gigantic ball of flaming gas.   
"This was where Illusive man told me about my sister." Shepard informed her technical guide. As they watch the conversation from the sidelines.

"Sisterly love is more complicated than most think." The Illusive man chuckled in the memory breaking their existential conversation, his confidence oozed out of every pore.  
"What's this about?" Shepard in the memory said finally. "If you think that for one minute she's back in your hands, you're wrong. It's going to take an army for you to take my sister away from me again."  
"You're a very passionate woman Shepard." Again the cigarette met his lips. "It's refreshing. Svenja is playing her part, and I couldn't think of a safer place to keep her than with her loving older sister. If you want to keep her safe Shepard, you will do as I ask."

"I was a puppet. Nothing but his little doll on a string." Hissed Shepard turning away from the memory shattering it where it played out. "He killed her any way. I disobeyed and he killed her. One flick of a switch and the lights went out."   
The memory of the incident playing out behind her. 

It was the facility on Aite. The green glow of the Virtual Intelligence's effect on all the technology around it.  
He screamed, the VI David hybrid.   
This was where Shepard had been introduced to the true scope of her cybernetic enhancements.  
"You can hear it." Legion asked as they both looked in the direction of the screams.  
Shepard nodded "Him, hear Him" She walked through doors that had previously in reality been cut off from her. Beating the memory to the end destination.   
"David Archer." She put her hands in her pockets looking at the young man. Suspended amongst the machinery, eyes held open by wires, tubes in his mouth. She could still hear him screaming.  
"His brother did this." She spat as the memory finally caught up, her memory self running into the room, passing through Shepard. They were fighting the VI as it/he was attempting to take over the Normandy computer.   
"His own brother!" She shouted, the rock in the river. The only thing in the room that didn't move. "He trusted him, and his own brother used him as an experiment. Your job as an older sibling is to make sure they are ok, keep them safe, help them. Not this!"   
Green light exploded from the destruction of the last node. Finally David was visible to the others in the room.  
Dr Gavin Archer had come to argue with Shepard. He pleaded with her and Svenja, her own younger sister to not take David away. In that moment it took all her strength not to shoot him right then.  
Dr Archer threatening against taking his brother away. Another facility, another Cerberus base, David would have no peace, no freedom. If he was with Cerberus he would be a tool, no more than a puppet like her.  
Shepard knew what disobeying the Illusive mans orders would mean.   
The memory had skipped forward a little, Sisters were shouting. Arguing over the value of one life to another. The value of David over the value of Svenja. Who was worth more? Which choice was right, what would help their cause.

Shepard ordered the release of David Archer. In that moment she had failed her job as an older sister.  
It was instantaneous. One order to one death.   
"The Illusive man doesn't bluff that's for sure." Shepard said with out acknowledging the scene.  
"You sacrificed your sisters life. For what Shepard Commander?" Legion asked "What made his life so valuable."  
Shepard touched the bars that made up the horrific monstrosity that held David.  
"He's autistic." She informed the Synthetic. "A savant, He can talk to Geth. Which is why his brother did this." She swallowed a lump in her throat as she watched herself carry her sister out of the room. "A human that could understand synthetics was one thing. An innocent man tortured for his brothers experiments. The right thing to do was to free him. Get him the care he needed. My sisters last act of kindness. She died a hero, and I live as a traitor."  
"Square root of 912.04 is 30.2... it all seemed harmless..." David's words hung in the air as the scene liquified back to the Illusive mans room, ball of fire and all. Shepard with Legion stood again aback from the memory that played out despite her wanting to have nothing to do with it.  
"You evil, son of a bitch." Shepard swore at him, as she watched the memory of her self pace like a rabid animal. She remembered wishing it all wasn't a hologram, she wanted to get her hands around his throat and squeeze until that smug grin popped right off.  
"Shepard, I am of course, a man of my word. You disobeyed and subsequently, punished."  
"You have made the biggest mistake of your life." She snarled "You take away all that I care about and that gives me nothing to lose, which makes me a very dangerous enemy."  
The Illusive man smiled raising his cigarette to his lips he never dropped her gaze his electric glowing blue eyes starring smugly at her, As he readied himself to reveal his trump card. He stood up and walked over to her until he was face to face with him.  
"Taking your dear Kaidan off the table, because I'm sure he would put up a fight. I know of at least one person that I can use against you."  
The screens behind him began streaming footage. Recent footage of Shepard leaning against Jokers chair while they chatted aimlessly, endlessly, even footage from the SR1 where she gave him a bottle of brandy she had been given for saving a merchants cargo. Ashley didn't like brandy, Kaidan was a whiskey man and she was dry for just about 10years, or that was the excuse.  
"It would be a terrible tragedy if something happened to Mr Moreau."  
Shepard's response was nothing but a whisper "Don't you dare." In that whisper she had shown her hand.   
The Illusive man smiled "Salvation comes with a cost. Judge us not by our methods, but what we seek to accomplish." He walked back to his chair "Don't give me reason to punish you again Shepard."  
***  
Miranda poured herself over all the information they had on the Lazarus project. Thankfully before they had destroyed the Illusive mans base they had recovered a small amount of the files. Not enough to make it an easy task, but enough to start her in the right direction.  
She worked closely with Dr Chakwas, to make heads and tails of the medical jargon.   
"There was a lot of clone tissue used in the project." Chakwas said "That shouldn't be affected at least."  
Miranda shook her head "The clone tissue never matured fast enough for the results the Illusive man required. We had a donor." The room went quiet, more than just Chakwas heard her.  
"Who was the Donor?" Chakwas asked slowly as if she already knew the answer, Miranda looked around the room, she saw a few faces come to the conclusion before she spoke.   
"Her sister, that we captured on Akuze."   
"No one survived Akuze." Kaidan said from behind her, she had almost forgotten he was there. "No one but Shepard."   
Miranda found the data pad with the information on the Akuze attack. She handed it to him rather than explaining.  
"You may want to sit down. It's not the easiest of reads." She informed him.

Kaidan took the data pad away. Read and re read the information and he still had trouble believing what he was seeing. The Akuze incident was orchestrated by the Illusive man, by Cerberus to find Shepard. To find the one person who could survive, who could beat the odds. A few people including Shepard's own sister had been badly wounded and collected before any one could know that they were still alive.   
He remembered the Thresher maw attack on Admrial Kahoku's men way back when they were first fighting Saren. Shepard's hesitation as she approached the downed Mako and the distress signal. Though she hadn't flinched when the Maw Broke free of the ground, she dealt with it. No wonder Cerberus wanted her.   
He placed the data pad on the table and sighed.  
"What?" Joker said passing by.  
"It's like, she was this whole other person I never knew about." He said "I wish she could have told me."  
"Yeah because sitting you down for a cup of coffee and a catch up is the right thing to do in the middle of an intergalactic war." Joker said sullenly.  
"Joker." He scolded not appreciating his tone.  
"Don't Joker me, Kaidan. You missed out, you walked away. The shit that happened that year was heavy, no one wanted to relive it. Lest of all Shepard. Some of us care a little to much about her to let her go back down that road."  
Kaidan reigned in any anger that was brewing from Joker's words, and took a moment to collect him self. "I know." He said calmly.  
"I don't think you do." Joker snapped.  
"No, I know. What happened between you two."   
Joker stopped stunned by the omission. He had imagined this conversation would have gone a little different, Kaidan a little more angry. More of his bones snapping.   
"She told you?"  
"In the middle of a fire fight on Mars." He said off hand and laughed "Our Shepard has amazing timing."   
Joker sat down across the table from him. "You took it well."  
"I didn't have time to take it any other way. I guess that was her master plan." He sighed. "She did eventually explain. Your right. I left, and you stayed. You were there for her. It's hard to compete with that."   
Joker raised an eyebrow.  
Kaidan continued "You two were friends, from the moment you met, Shepard and I, its been awkward."   
Joker laughed "Not all romance goes smoothly. Even for you "Romeo."   
They sat in silence across the table from each other for a while. The steady hum of the ship filling in for the lack of conversation.  
"How are you?" Kaiden finally asked "Since EDI?"   
"Ok." Joker said "For now," he stalled a moment "While you were getting ready to rescue Shepard, she said something." He thought about the words "She said, I'm sorry about EDI, it was the only way that seemed right." He looked up at Kaidan across the table from him, searching his face for the answers to questions. "What do you think she meant?"  
"She was in a bad way Joker, it might be nothing." Kaidan toyed the edge of the Data pad "Though we don't know what happened before the crucible fired, and until she wakes up we wont know. No one else survived."  
"But Shepard always does." Joker mumbled to himself   
***  
Shepard had willed the memory world to become her cabin on the SR2. She sat at her chair looking at the picture of Kaidan on her desk and the familiar toy space craft that littered her room. No fish in the fish tank. No music on the radio, just piece and quiet.  
"These are all painful memories?" Legion stated "Do you not remember anything else?"  
Shepard thought about the lab, about Morden Singing. There she was standing in front of the Laboratory equipment, the familiar smells of chemicals and disinfectant, with Morden's tall lean form dancing and singing as he moved about. "I am the very model of a scientist Salarian, I've studied species, Turian, Assari, and Batarian"   
Shepard laughed speechless for a moment at the Salarian's display.   
"The good moments were so small." She murmured. Changing the memory to the Life Support Control room. The small dry area the best place for the Drell. He didn't even seem to mind that the drive core was his only view. The only sound system the steady hum of the engine. She walked forward pulling her chair out, across the table from Thane. The sharp scrape of the chair legs on the metal made him look up.  
"You are dictating the memory." Legion said falling in behind Shepard "Curious."  
"If I have to relive my life, I am going to control what I see. I'm sick of reliving memories I would rather not."  
She turned back to Thane, the act of breaking the forth wall pausing the memory. Interacting with it seemed to bring it to life.   
"You never acted like a dying man." She told him.  
"You have the advantage there, Shepard. You’ve already died. Perhaps later you can give me some suggestions." He said his green lips turning upward in a smile. His ethereal voice resounding around the room and tickling her core.  
"You were calm here." Legion stated, clinging to the facts of a situation.  
"When the soul is traumatised, or the body is ill or injured, a person is no longer Whole." She said not taking her eyes of the frozen memory "I was far from whole. Thane was helping me." She smiled "Curbing the anger. Pity Jack could have used some tuition as well." She laughed. The young woman never believed her when she said she knew how she felt. That she wasn't scared of her, and excluding the help for the suicide mission she didn't actually want anything in return for her friendship.  
Small memories floated around like bubbles, Jack, Grunt, Tali, Garrus, excerpts of missions with them. As they dissipated they were left in the hanger. Coming off the shuttle.

"Jesus Christ." Shepard gasped, running from her team to the elevator up to the CIC.  
"Joker!" She ran into the cockpit beating all the other team mates. His big comfortable leather pilots seat turned to face her.  
"Thank god your ok." She exclaimed kneeling down next to him laying a gauntleted hand on his chair.   
"Careful Shepard, some one might think you like me." He laughed  
She couldn't laugh. She was in the armour, feeling the fear. This wasn't like before watching a show from the sideline. She was living the memory. She stood her hand trailing up the seat to rest ever so gently on his shoulder. "Jeff" she said her tone gentle but serious, she turned to him, catching his attention with the ernest look on her face. "You're it. Right now you're all I have left. Sure I care about my crew, but I..."  
He cut her off by placing his hand on hers. "Shepard I'm fine."   
Her furrowed brow eased up for a minute. "The crew." She paused "Was it the collectors?"  
He nodded.   
"Then we head straight after them."

She turned her hand sliding off his shoulder as Joker and the cockpit disintegrated, the steal walls and floors rising up out of the decomposition of the last memory. The human Reaper Larva looming in the darkness. Moving its huge lumbering mechanical skeleton swinging its arm towards her she jumped. The images moved from the fight with the Larva to escaping the base.  
The last of her team running a head, sprinting through the tunnels. Shepard bringing up the rear. Tunnel walls collapsing a chunk of wall catching her across the shoulder and side of her body. She stumbled. Loosing her footing and a second bolder ricochet off her helmet.   
Legion her spirit guide offered a hand. "You don't want to be left behind. Shepard Commander"   
She looked down the collapsing tunnels, she looked to Legion. "I left you down there. With out even a good bye."   
"No time." Her mechanical friend said "Go."  
Lungs burning, body bruised, she sprinted the last yards towards the Normandy. The enemy had followed her, desperate looking for their own way to survive.   
Joker appeared in the cargo bay doors opening fire, giving her time to climb aboard. The bay doors close and darkness enveloped her. It was warm, safe, full of the hum of the warp drive as it powered up and jumped. 

Out of the darkness a single light highlighted the mess table. As she walked to it here armour faded away to shorts and a singlet top. Helmet disappeared to reveal messy red hair. She sat at the table her gun there, shredder rounds scattered amongst the empty beer bottles.  
"We put your name up with the other Fallen." She said to the darkness, Legions single blinking light visible through the shadows "First synthetic ever." She pointed with her gun in the direction. She sighed and picked up the half empty beer on the table.  
"Your a part of the memory now." He stated "This is not how the reflection was intended."  
She swilled the bottle around and looked at him "What does it matter if the reflection is third person or first person. I know the lines, surely I can join the show."  
Shepard absentmindedly spun her gun in her hands. She slammed the bottle down on the table and squeezed the trigger.  
She heard a gasp, as the empty barrel clicked.   
The gun came down on the shredder rounds instantly loading it and she lifted the gun arm straight out pointing at him. Her eyes slowly followed the line of her arm and saw what was at the end of it. She relaxed her grip and the gun fell back resting on her fingers.   
“Sorry” she said to Joker. “It’s been one of those days.”  
“For us all” he replied.   
Shepard pulled up a beer from beside her. She hooked the top on the edge of the table and with one swift movement nocked the top off. She placed it next to her. “Sit.” She gestured to the chairs.  
Joker ambled over it to it. He lifted the drink and adjusted his cap.   
She picked up another beer from the pack at her feet and cradled it.   
“I would have thought you would be partying with the crew or something.” He said finally.   
She caught him eyeing the discarded bottles about the table. She scoffed “I don't really party." She looked up "And the mission isn't over yet."  
He almost dropped his beer, she assumed it was catching a look at her. A gash ran down the left side of her face from the centre point of her eye brow around the curve of her temple to her cheek. The skin rose up around the out side of the cut, it looked angry and bloody. What ever had done that had obviously done some damage to her eye on the left hand side as well. The large blue and black shadow dusted her eye socket and part of her cheek. She looked down catching the glimpse of concern on his face. As she stopped talking the room went silent  
“What’s the matter Joker no witty comes back?” Finally she added  
He leaned forward on the table “I’m sorry, I’m a little bit concerned at the game of drunken russian roulette you were going to play by your self.”  
Shepard laughed nervously “Its not roulette with out a six shooter.”  
“Semi automatic pistol kinda takes the chance out of the game.” His sarcastic remark was very bitter. “Kind of makes it more of a choice.”   
Shepard sighed and took another swig of her drink “It’s a game I use to play.” She laughed a little; it was a sick chuckle as if reviling in the thought of her own death amused her. “These days it would just be returning things to normal.”   
“What the hell Shepard.” He said slamming his bottle down. “You’ve never been this kind of coward before.” There was anger and disappointment to his face that reminded her of the way Kaidan looked at her on horizon, she didn’t like it.   
“Alright Moraue, you want a pity party lets go. I’ve had my brain pumped full of ancient alien tech. I was killed, and no one had the decency to leave me dead. Now I have to work for the company that faked my sisters death and tested on her for 5 years then killed her because they sank 4 billion dollars into my sorry ass.” She looked at him her teeth were clenched, anger turning to pain in her chest. “It just feels like some times there will be no end to this. Every adversary we defeat more pop up. .” she had now turned to face him, She looked him in the eye waiting searching for an answer “If you can have all that in your head and not want to hide under the covers and do what the fucking council has done and pretend like it doesn’t exist then you’re a braver man than I.”  
Joker smiled and laughed a little.   
“What?” Shepard said.  
He shook his head and finished his beer “Honestly I will take my shitty disease any day over that life.”  
“You sure?” She was still hurting, still scared, still lonely the memory feeling more real than should.  
“Straight swap, my boots for your hat. I’ll sit at the helm and drag your ass out of the firing line all day.” For emphasis she swiped the hat off his head and put in over her jostled red hair. “Though I don’t think I have the brain for the wise cracks and that’s a prerequisite to piloting isn’t it?”  
“Flight 101.” He said pulling her head down with the brim of his cap “Shitty attitude and basic areal manoeuvres.”   
She chuckled and swirled the hat around so the brim was at the back. She was surprised he hadn’t taken it back. “I do appreciate what you do here, you know that right.”  
“You better.” He said his cocky attitude returning “I’m the best there is.”  
“I’m not just meaning the flying, Jeff. This mess” she pointed to herself the surrounding empty beer bottles and the gun, “is not your job.”   
He took a deep breath and turned so he was finally facing her. The look on his face was something Shepard was unaccustomed to with Joker, there was honesty in his eyes. She had shown him her vulnerability perhaps he was returning the gesture.   
“I think it’s the least I can do to listen to you have a bitch about how shit life is.”  
“Thanks” Shepard stood up unloading the gun and tucking it into her belt. She took his cap back off and placed it carefully back on his head.  
“You know what. You always come through in the end.” She said the awkward half smiled returning to her face.  
She stepped forward they were close now; she slowly unfurled her arms and carefully draped them around his shoulders. She hugged him close resting her chin on his shoulder. His arms linked behind her, hugging her back. She felt his face move towards her his beard brushing against her cheek. She turned, lips touched for an instant, first brushing lightly against each other. Her mouth opened to him and his to hers, there was a moment just a split of a second where she almost gave into the feeling, but sense caught up with her. She pulled away. As did he possibly coming to the same realisation she did. They laughed.   
"Not what I initially intended." Shepard said with a smile.   
"It's the raw animal magnetism." He joked.  
Shepard raised and eye brow, and said sarcastically "yeah, that's you all over."   
The scene paused. Shepard had forgotten she was trapped in her own history.  
"Unusual that you should push me to pursue a romantic relation ship with Jeff, when you already had feelings for him." The feminine voice caught her off guard.  
Shepard turned, the image of the Geth Legion had morphed into another friendly synthetic face EDI.  
"Jesus EDI." She gasped feeling a little embarrassed, "What happened to Legion."  
The beautiful mechanical women smiled. "I had more questions than he did. That was one of them."  
"So" Shepard said getting a handle in what was going on, watching the light dim around the scenery. "This is an interrogation."   
"More like a chance for personal evaluation."  
Shepard sighed, shaking her head. "My feelings aren't romantic. That one tiny isolated incident has never repeated and probably never will."   
"How do you know? If your feelings are romantic or not?" She asked the last of the light petering out.  
"Firstly when you kiss the guy, your first reaction isn't laughing." She smiled thinking of her first kiss with Kaidan. "You want to see romance?" Shepard questioned the Fembot. "Your just in time."  
***  
"Wait ,wait, wait." Shepard called out.   
Kaidan meet her in the hall way followed by Vega and Anderson In the Montreal base. Her protest halting every one and everything in the area except for Shepard and EDI.  
"Is there a problem Shepard?" EDI asked,   
"You don't want to start from here. Lets get to the juicy stuff." As she spoke her armour seemed to grow out of her skin. The back drop had been cold metal flared up with a harsh light as Mars appeared under their feet. Gun fire whizzed over head. She ran forward into cover, Kaidan joined her behind the large rock returning fire on the Cerberus troopers.   
Butterfly's were raging batter in her stomach, not from the mission but from seeing him again after so long after Horizon, there had been no communication between them save that one letter, that one letter she had read a thousand times.   
She popped out of cover, nailing a shock trooper through the visor of his helmet. Moving to the crate, as a renewed hail of gun fire erupted in her direction.  
"Kaidan." She called out. The "isolated incident" with Joker, also at the forefront of her thoughts. "Kaidan I have something to say and I wanted you to hear it from me."   
"Not really the time Shepard." He barked.  
She fired one more shot and moved back to his cover, turning her radio off.   
"I kissed Joker." She blurted out, her brain not working as a filter for her mouth. At first she wasn't sure if he had heard her. Another wave of enemies hitting them, he was distracted for a moment from her words.  
"What are you trying to tell me Shepard?" He asked, tone steady and low, turning to wards her as he reloaded his weapon.  
"I'm telling you, because this little thing happened but I didn't want you finding out Via one of Zaeed's security tapes or worse."  
He fixed her with that steady stare sliding the Thermal clip into his assault rifle with a little more force than necessary. Turned and let loose on the enemy pushing the combat forward onto their territory. Shepard rolled her eyes and followed suit.  
"Talk to me Kaidan," She said sternly, the silent treatment was even worse than the lecture on Horizon.   
"And say what?" He snapped  
"Anything! For gods sake high school girls kiss longer than we did. They feel about as silly afterwards as well." She explained, desperately.   
Vega was moving passed them and the enemies numbers were thinning "For Christ sake you two, make up and make out." He quipped.  
"I'm trying to tell you, I had a moment of weakness, but it doesn't change how I feel about you." She exclaimed.  
"And how's that?" Sullen jealousy dripping of the edges of his words.  
She reached forward tucking her fingers behind the gorget on his chest plate. Pulling him towards her. Metal armour scraped together before flesh. Lips met, a familiar kiss that could still light a fire through her body. His rifle bumping her side, his free arm coming to rest on the small of her back pulling her closer. She let go of his armour her hand sliding over his shoulders. The kiss was fervid, not with out urgency, full of longing from the years apart, driven forward by the inevitability of pulling away to finish the battle. The stubble was new and rough against her skin, added a certain level of rugged charm to him. She pulled away, wishing she didn't have to, holding on to the sensation as long as she could. As his lips slipped away from hers she let out a tiny breath, almost as if she had been holding it the whole time. "That's how." She said her voice not making any more sound than a sharp whisper. 

She turned from him The battle morphing from strategic gunfire, to the chase of what they now know as EDI's body.  
Shepard headed the party chasing the slender mechanical woman through short cuts. She was more agile that Shepard first assumed, faster too. She rounded into the bay. Climbing into a shuttle. Shepard fired wildly as she began to take off fearing she may have gotten away.   
"Vega!" She shouted into the radio.  
"Already on it." He called back yahooing as she saw the Alliance shuttle careered into the escaping one. The offending ship come crashing down,Shepard only just managing to dive out of the way.   
Vega landed, exiting quickly, Shepard noticed Kaidan helping Liara. 

The mechanical woman leaped from her shuttle. All flesh and fabric melted away from the flames of the crash. Kaiden pushed Liara aside and engaged the enemy, his bullets doing nothing she approached him. A steal hand of immense strength grabbed him by the throat.   
Shepard couldn't fire, there was no opening and she couldn't risk hitting Kaidan.   
"Let him go." She shouted.  
The woman paused "Orders?" She asked her head bending to listen to her communicator, Shepard never heard the reply but she could guess. She watched the woman begin to beat him against the hull of the ship. Shepard was not about to allow this to be one of Illusive mans "punishments".  
She ran forward to try and close the gap, feet struggling to gain purchase on the ground. Adrenalin spiked anger and fear taking precedence her brain as she watched the violence. By the time she was close enough to affect anything the mechano-woman had tossed Kaidan aside as if he were no more than a crumpled bit of paper. Time slowed to a crawl as the creature that may have well cause the destruction of her love, turned on her.  
Her split second reaction was a shock wave. The huge blast of biotic energy hit the fem-bot the blue energy sparking off the metal, she reeled back giving Shepard a moment to pull out her shot gun and fire from the hip into the the creature. The droids shield was obliterated in the first shot the second dropped her. The instant the droids head clanked against the ground Shepard ran to the form of Kaidan, she skidded in next to him. Signalling Vega to pick up any pieces.  
"Kaidan?" She questioned checking for signs of life, and severe injury. His eyes were closed behind the visor, but his chest was still rising and falling, faintly.  
"Shepard." Jokers voice broke through the fog of concern "Reapers are on their way, we have to move."   
She rolled him carefully and levered his unconscious weight into a position that she could lift him. Carefully picking him up in a fireman's lift and heading to the now landing Normandy.   
Again the cargo bay doors closed. Filling the room with darkness, the weight lifted off her shoulders and EDI re appeared.  
"The only other AI like you. We kill it, and let you wear her skin." Shepard said darkly.  
"I'm surprised you left it in tact," EDI said her soft melodic voice carrying through the pitch. "I would have thought you would have ripped it apart to the very last micron."  
"Believe me I wanted to. Even after you started walking around in her."   
The hospital room peeked into view Kaidan lying bruised and broken. She pressed her face against the glass. He was fine now of course, these are feelings from the memory's flooding her mind. She felt she had failed again. She linked her hands together across the top of her head. Moving so only her forehead touched the cold glass.  
"You take this so personally." EDI said joining her. "It's as if you fell like you are responsible."  
Shepard looked with disbelief at the robot flawed by her statement. "Am I not?" She said slowly "First and foremost I am a Commander, it is my job to make sure my crew are safe."  
"It is your job, to Command this vessel and fight a war." EDI corrected "Are they not soldiers?"   
"Is doesn't make me any less responsible, my decisions lead this. My inability to..."  
"Be every where at once?" EDI cut her off "be omnipotent..."  
"To be strong enough to save them." She yelled "all of them what about the colony of Baterians? Edin Prime, Horizon, Freedoms Progress, the human war ships on the citadel, admiral Kohoku, Captian Kirrahe, Legion, Jenkins, Ashley. You, Morden, Thane, Every one on the Citadel, hundreds of Thousands of lives I could have saved!"  
"How Shepard?" EDI like Legion had little to no emotion in her voice and her questions sounded innocent. Though infuriating.  
Shepard opened her mouth and shut it again.   
When she didn't get and answer EDI rephrased her question.  
"Why are you responsible for the whole galaxy?"  
Again Shepard couldn't answer.   
"Why does it have to be you?"  
Morden appeared through the darkness, "It had to be me. Some one else might have got it wrong." His last words to her on Tuchanka before he sacrificed himself to cure the Krogan's ripped through her like a jagged knife. He was right. Because some times your born with a job to do.  
"I was born with thick skin and broad shoulders." She began "A high pain threshold, and a stubborn personality." She paused for a moment. "It had to be me. No one else could survive it. So the guilt its mine too." 

A different hospital scene began to solidify through the darkness.   
Thane's bed appeared before her. Kolyat at her side. Thane lay quietly breathing, the end to his terminal illness brought around quicker by an assassins blade, his last actions heroic again another sacrifice for the greater good. They began to read the prayer,   
“Kalahira, mistress of inscrutable depths, I ask forgiveness.  
Kalahira, whose waves wear down stone and sand--  
Kalahira, wash the sins from this one,  
and set him on the distant shore of the infinite spirit.   
Kalahira, this one's heart is pure,  
but beset by wickedness and contention.  
Guide this one to where the traveler never tires,  
the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve.  
Guide this one, Kalahira,  
and she will be a companion to you as she was to me.”  
Shepard choked back her emotions. She crossed her arms chewing on her lip. Thane's eyes had closed while they were reading. Breath leaving his body with out so much a rattle.  
"She?" Shepard questioned gaining control of her voice "Why did the prayer say she?"  
"The prayer was not for my father, he had already asked forgiveness for the lives he had taken. His wish was for you Shepard to find your own forgiveness." Kolyat explained simply.  
Shepard swallowed. She covered her mouth with her hand, and left the hospital before she broke down.  
"It was the only five minutes you let your self grieve." Ashley's voice echoed, through her mind. Shepard was on the Normandy, people were talking to her, asking her for things, specialist Traynor telling her about new missions. She consoled Cortez, talked to Vega. She organised the war effort, finding war assets, assigning materials to the Crucible build. Functioning outwardly while inside she was screaming.   
Thane Krios was a name on the wall.   
Her friend, her mentor, the one person that had managed to quell the growing storm in her heart, and now he was just another shining silver plaque that every one just walked by, and she had no time to mourn.  
"The only things that leave us are friends; the only things we gain are enemies.” She muttered under her breath.  
***  
"Let me get this straight. You want to disengage the machines?" Kaidan said voice beginning to raise "You want to take her off the only thing that's keeping her alive?"  
Dr Chakwa's put a hand on Kaidan's arm. He snatched it away.   
"We have done all we can to repair her cybernetics, if she's going to breathe, she has to do it her self." She told him.  
Miranda cut in "We will put her in an oxygen chamber, where we can monitor her."  
"And what? Watch her die?" He bit back  
Miranda shot him a dark and scathing look pushing the data pad with Shepard's reconstruction data into his hands.  
"I don't know if you've noticed Major, but she's been slipping since she's got here. Brain activity is at a minimum. Her body is as fine as it can be but if she doesn't want to breathe on her own."  
Kaidan's shoulders slumped, Miranda's words hit him hard "What are you saying?" He asked fully understanding the implications.  
"We have asked a lot of Shepard over the years, she has borne the brunt of every assault. Stood at the head of every Vanguard. Don't you think she deserves peace?" She asked earnestly. "Are you really here because you want her to live. Or are you here because you can't live with out her."  
Kaidan was stunned, left unable to answer. All he could do was look over to Shepard on the bed hoping she had an answer for him.  
"I'm here for selfish reasons." Joker said entering the med bay. He had heard the argument from out side.  
"As am I." Liara stated following him with Garrus and Vega.  
Joker continued "Let's face it, we demand a lot from Shepard, and she's never let us down. So what's a second resurrection?"   
***  
"You survive Shepard? Why?" EDI asked. "Above all others, and where all others have failed, you succeed and you live. Why?"  
Shepard shook her head, she was rattled, the prolonged ordeal of reliving her life had worn away at her composure.  
"Why Shepard?"  
"I don't know." She shouted, flung back into a dingy old room. A lonely bulb hung from the ceiling with out a shade, buzzing as it gave off a sickly orange glow. Standing barefoot in the bathroom looking into the grime covered mirror. Her face was young, half the age it should be. Traces of puppy fat around her jaw, with cheek bones that hadn't been grown I yet. Her hair was long, past her shoulders the ends beginning to curl. She must be only 15 or 16 if it was before she started cutting her hair off.  
"Get out here." A gruff voice bellowed from the other room. Her hands were shaking, eyes were red, she had come in because she had been crying. Trying to compose her self. She took a deep breath counted to three and set her face in the cold emotionless expression she had come to hide behind so often.  
She opened the door and stepped out.   
"There you are." The man said placing his hands on her shoulders running down her arms, the flesh on his palms was rough, his manor rougher.   
She pushed him away. No amount of psyching herself up was going to work, she would have to go back to the boss and work out something else. She would find away to feed herself and her sister another way.  
"I'm sorry. I can't, I'll give you your money back, I just can't do this."  
The man raised his hand and hit with a back handed slap his ring catching the flesh of her cheek. Wincing as the broken flesh screamed. Then gasped as he grabbed her by the biceps pulling her close to him.  
"I paid for you. I do what I want with you." He hissed, his breath stinking of booze.  
Shepard's face had slipped back into her mask as she glanced the weapon tucked into his pants. Looking up, meeting his eyes with a cold stare of her own, she reached forward only moving her arm from below the elbow. Her fingers reached deftly into his pants wrapping her fingers tightly around the gun, she slipped her finger through the tigger guard, and flicked the safety off with her thumb. The click making him look down. He didn't have time to react as her next move was to fire down, towards his knee cap. She angled the gun so it missed anything vital. He let go of her as he fell backwards swearing profusely. She kept a tight hold on the gun.   
"You bitch," he spat at her "my fucking knee!"  
"Be thankful I didn't shoot you in the dick and leave you to become a unic." She snarled gathering up her things. "This is not how you treat a girl." She pointed to her cheek.  
Turning to the door, and reaching for the handle. She heard a rustle and a click, her right hand still holding the gun had raised before she had even formed the thought in her head. She fired, turning to look only after the last of the sound dissipated. He lay back on the floor his second weapon in his hand. A stunned look permanently stuck on his face as if he didn't believe the bullet wound in his head was there. She stepped through the door and closed it.

"It's kill or be killed." She said to the hall way. EDI materialising through the fading memory,  
"So you kill to survive?" The droid asked  
The hallway exploded, into a green terrain gentle rolling hills surrounded the drop site.  
"I just survive." Shepard muttered "To stupid to die some might say."   
The ground began to rumble, her squad mates appeared in the memory, startled, her sister terrified. Shepard 23 years old bullet proof, un holstered her pistol and equipped explosive ammo and the rumbling stopped with an explosion. The Thresher Maw's muscular tube like body, broke the surface with a deafening roar. Soldiers lost in the hole, or pushed aside. Then the beast dived taking a mouthful out of the contingent and one of the Mako's. Shepard ran, the beast surfaced again. It's colossal head turned to her. She was the last still on her feet, the last still fighting, the one to stupid to die. It eyed up Shepard began to stretch out and dive. Shepard sprinted to the second mako, sliding between the wheels using their last vehicle and only transport away from this godforsaken place as cannon fodder.  
The Maw took the Mako in its jaws lifting it up meters above her head. She turned rolling on her back and bracing her pistol with both hands. She took aim on the vehicles fuel tank waited until it was fully exposed and fired.   
The explosive rounds burned in the tank and combusted taking with it the beasts head. The remnants of its body collapsing to the ground, sending a final shake through Shepard's boots.   
Looking about her there was nothing but dead lay above ground. She couldn't see how those that faired below ground were. She picked through the debris, like a vulture.  
"And you still survive." EDI said joining her.  
Shepard looked at the automaton, the low light glinting off her steal shell. Shepard hadn't walked away in reality. Shepard had stayed had searched for her sister, searched for her team for hours, until she didn't know what time it was any more. A second party had found her, exhausted amongst the madness.   
This time with EDI she walked away.

"There must be a reason you live Shepard? She asked.  
"I don't..." Her sentence trailed off as her cabin doors opened and she saw Kaidan.  
"A quick drink?" He said already in her room. A Bottle, inviting smile, two glasses in hand.  
Any resolve she had to be stern, to focus on business melted. If he had one power over her, it was that, the power to make the fight for the universe seem so very far away.

They sat, drank, kissed, they talked about the good times, and harder times.  
"I remember the first night we bunked together." Shepard said a knowing grin sliding its way onto her face.  
"Yeah, I was pretty spectacular." Kaidan laughed  
Shepard laughed "and I did nothing?" She straddled him, Knees either side of his legs she ran her fingers through his hair down his face her thumb toying with the corner of his bottom lip.  
"You mean a lot to me Kaidan." She said and paused for a moment the ernest revelation playing on her tongue, for years she had avoided saying it. Cruel when he had been so open. For so long she had kept the keys to her vault of feelings well hidden even from herself. Now was not the time for those fears, now was the time for truth.  
"I love you." Three words she should have said years ago.   
He smiled, the way he always did when he looked at her. Her took her hand in his and reached out for her. "I have always loved you."   
She kissed him hard, held him tight. For the first time in years she was scared. Scared to die, scared of what she would loose. Scared of the out come of this final mission. Scared of the ending she had seen for herself many years ago.  
He stood up lifting her easily with him, and tossing her on the bed. She laughed as she bounced to sitting. Leaning forward reaching out for him as he followed. Her fingers caught the bottom of his shirt yanking it over his head as he crawled on to the bed snaffling her up.  
"Eager." He chuckled kissing her neck.  
"I have missed you." She breathed, her hands running up his sides across his back and into his hair. "I have missed you so much."  
The room began to fade from the fish tanks and walls to the ship collection couches, then eventually Kaidan.   
"No." Shepard cried out jumping off the bed that also disappeared "No!" Just like before she was no longer in control of the visions not longer in control of what she was seeing. She shouted at the dream, she chased the memory, running through darkness.   
Running for the conduit, she stopped confused for a minute uniform swapped for armour, ground and gunfire for the ship. 

Harbingers beam ripped through squadrons of people. Yet still they ran forward.  
Shepard heard the thunder of the next shot. The beam reached out just missing her but ploughing into the vehicles and soldiers at her heels. She turned Vega and Kaidan were right behind her.   
"Shit." She scored under hear breath. Vega was moving trying to pull himself out of the way of more fire but Kaidan wasn't.   
She ran back, mission forsaken for that one moment. Shoving Vega into cover and ran to help Kaidan.   
"Joker." She cried out through the radio over the noise. "We need and evac."  
Kaidan shook his head.   
"Don't argue with me on this one." She scolded him.  
The Normandy landed engines still running for the quick pick up. She helped Kaidan to the ramp and gave him over to Vega.  
"Get him to the med bay." She said gearing up to make the last of the run alone.  
"Shepard." Kaidan called out "I'm with you to the end."   
She looked up. Blood spatter covered his face, and his armour, mixing with mud. He leaned heavily on Vega even though he protested being left behind.  
Shepard shook her head. "Not this time." She said quietly.   
"Don't leave me." He pleaded catching her arm "I can't loose you again."   
She reached forward taking his face in her hands. "Remember what ever happens. I love you." She kissed him, through the dirt and the blood, as she pulled away she said "and I'm coming back, I promise." 

Black. 

Darkness flashed like some one turning off a light. Sounds of gunfire death and war noises, vanished. Trees, Shepard could see trees, shadows darker than the expanse of black she was looking at.  
Warm light began to emanate from the ground. Shadows, whispers of people lingered in the corner of her vision.  
"I'm done with this nightmare." She shouted into the empty expanse.   
Shepard heard the breath of a voice on the wind.  
"Ash?" She called out, chasing ghosts. "Ashley?"  
The voice became deeper and she could make out words.  
"The measure of an individual can be difficult to discern by actions alone."   
"Thane!" Shepard had to stop to catch her breath. Her head was spinning. More voices were speaking together becoming a mash of noise. She heard Legion, Anderson, her sister every one she had ever known that had died while she lived.  
"You live while we die." Star child said his tiny child figure walking towards her hands tucked into his white hoody, making his way through the wisps of shades.  
"No." Shepard exclaimed "Not you, I'm done with you."  
"You continue, where we end." The child's words were strong and quiet. His sweet voice of youth sounding innocent hiding a darker meaning.  
There was a sharp pain in Shepard's side. She looked down as blood began to seep from her armour. Her breath became short and laboured. Old wounds torn anew, her body returning to the beaten mess it was before.   
"No." She whispered.  
"You are fire that burns through the universe. You are the storm of ages and the unending night."  
She gasped, no longer able to fill her lungs. She collapsed to her knees. Her heart began to pound, she thumped the floor, fighting the terror.   
Forcing herself to grab the tiniest sips of air.   
The child stood before her. "No life will come from you. You are destruction. You are death." He hissed.  
The floor collapsed under her. Scrabbling for a hand hold on the precipice of a non existent pit, She fell buried alive in a dark hole.   
Her brain began to become lethargic. Ghosts of her guilt eating away at her. She was buried alive in her own mind.  
She reached her hand forward, feeling for the right direction. Pushing handful after handful of dirt and rock out of the way. A pin prick of light trickled down through the unyielding night.   
"I" she panted "am, unrelenting. Undying, Unstoppable." The last of her breath shuddering out of her body "and I live, because I choose to keep fighting. I know there are still wars to be won, and I'll be damned if I die before it is done."   
Eve's words built up the resolve in her mind. "In the darkest hour, there is always a way out."  
Light ripped through her world of black.  
***  
The oxygen chamber was a sealed hospital bed. All manor of hospital tech beeped and flashed so all the crew in the room knew something was working.  
Shepard lay on the bed. Ventilator removed, her chest fell with its last mechanical breath.  
The chamber slid shut with a hiss, and the new heart monitor began its dance across the screens.  
The room collectively held its breath. Miranda kept her eyes on the clock. 3 minutes at the top end before permanent brain damage.  
"Breathe." She whispered.  
The first minute ticked by, heart monitor began to slow, Shepard's body was beginning to react to the lack of oxygen.  
Each second sped by Miranda was beginning to panic. The atmosphere in the med bay was charged, she wasn't the only one noticing that the time was ticking closer to 2 minutes.  
Kaidan stood both hands resting on the glass, head bent as if he was willing her to take that vital breath, that one gulp of air that meant everything was alright.   
2 minutes passed.  
Garrus grasped his hands together unsure what to do with them Liara stood, her worry showed more in her face than her body.   
2 min 10 seconds  
Vega fidgeted and Joker sat still.  
2min 23second  
Shepard's back arched and she gasped. Filling her lungs with sweet oxygen.   
She screamed.

Panting she sat up, wide awake. Her hand found the chamber glass and she scrabbled against it in confusion.  
Miranda hit the release button. Not protocol, but the last time Shepard woke up like this she had fought a war 5 minutes after wiping the sleep from her eyes.  
Shepard shoved the slow moving canopy out of the way swinging her legs of the hospital bed. She fell forward into Kaidan's arms.   
Again the room fell quiet. Every one waiting to see if she was still Shepard. Eventually she pulled away and sat on the bed.  
"Some one get Hackett on the line." Her words croaky, her vocal chords still raw from screaming. She smiled wryly at the concerned looks from her friends faces.  
"I want to apply for shore leave. Now."

Epilogue   
Running to Eve, Shepard caught the top load of bricks before they began to unbalance.   
The female tribes had begun rebuilding some of the decimated stone work around the ruins of their once glorious city. The work was far from done, the city falling to ruin years before the Reaper attacks, but the Krogan were as stubborn and their architecture.  
Most of the work had to be done by hand to preserve the style and history encased in the stone, that Tuchanka and the Krogan were known for.  
Shepard helped her unload the burden and dusted the red earth particles off her clothes.  
"You're leaving?" Eve asked a hit of sadness in her other wise strong voice.  
Smiling Shepard answered "Today, yes. Three months is probably long enough to harass you for."  
"You are never a burden my friend."  
Shepard laughed as they embraced "Its good, I like this planet too much for you to kick me out permanently. Plus I wish to meet Morden as soon as he's born."  
The Krogan shaman female pressed her crest against Shepard's forehead sharing breath. A moment with nothing between them.   
Eve remembered Shepard's arrival trudging across the hot sad from the Mako. Lethargic steps dragging, Kicking up dust as she moved towards the camp. Eve had seen that look before, Many of her own friends and clan members had it before the cure of the genophage, before Morden Solus stepped up and freed her people from the heart break of infertility. An emptiness, a sluggish step. The struggle had come too far, taken too much. The look of a broken woman in need of help.  
Purpose was what she lacked, purpose and confidence. They had talked about her dreams the prophetic coma induced nightmare the Tailyka Shepard could bring only death, and never give life.  
With her species population cut to ribbons her home planet in ruin, Shepard had nothing left to offer. She had made her life in war. Honed her skills like any artiest until she had become a master.  
The universe no longer needed soldiers or killers, it needed builders, healers, diplomats and visionaries. All the things Shepard was not.  
Tailyka Shepard was a square peg with a round hole to fill.   
Eve smiled underneath her her ceremonial robes. Krogan were never seen as Spiritual, Tuchanka their home world was never seen by the rest of the galaxy as anything more than a dust lump of violence, but for her people and Shepard it offered a chance to learn to live again. A chance to teach her how to build, how to heal, and to show her that some times a warrior is still needed.  
Breaking apart the dear friends nodded to each other before Shepard began to trek through the dust back to the Mako, Retracing her steps. This time a whole woman. She was Shepard again.  
***  
"Romeo!" Came the excited bellow from across the corse way. Spying the young man head and shoulders above most of the humans in the area.  
"Vega." Kaidan offered him a welcoming hand shake which Vega turned into a hug.  
"Hey where's Lola?"  
"Tuchanka." Kaidan answered simply.  
"With out you?" Vega seemed perplexed "When she back?"  
"End of the week," A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth 3 days left, he was counting.  
"Drinks then. On me!" Vega exclaimed pushing through the crowd to the elevator to go to Purgatory.

Pounding music enveloped them as a beautiful Asari, delivered their drinks the cold lights of the dance floor extenuating the blue of her skin tone. Kaidan thanked her and leant back in the seat.  
"So Tuchanka?" Vega asked still curious about the Commanders extended leave.  
"I think she's more Krogan than human." Joked Kaidan, remembering when they hunted Saran years ago her red hair and armour eerily matched the Urdnot clan colours.  
"I think she needs something to fight." He paused knowing it was only half the problem.  
"You two ok?" Concern genuinely creasing Vega's forehead, he was a friend to both parties, he knew how lost they would be with out each other.  
Kaidan sighed as sipped his drink."I hope so."  
His mind trickled back through the months, he had been so elated that Shepard had survived the Citadel he hadn't been focused on what surviving had cost her.  
Playing at a normal relationship for a few weeks restoring apartment Anderson had given them it was surreal to think anything was brewing beneath Shepard facade.  
Shepard recovered from the coma, her broken nose and wounds had healed leaving only a few scars, disguising the wounds hidden by flesh, deep in her mind.  
"Fine." She would say "I'm Fine." No more no less. The more he asked the snappier she got. She play acted happy, healthy and busy but he knew better. He just had to wait until her stubbornness subsided so he could help.

Waking one night to an empty bed, Kaidan panicked. All the memories of broken sleep in cold, lonely beds from the two years Shepard spent dead came flooding back.  
Padding through the apartment he found her sitting on the stairs.  
Carefully he placed a hand on her shoulder. Her skin ice cold though she didn't shiver, she clutched a Data pad.  
Kaidan and never seen her like this. Shepard was unstoppable, Shepard was Strong and brash, Shepard was sitting in the dark on the top of the stairs chewing her bottom lip in her underwear.  
He sat down next to her, putting his arms around her with out saying a word. Slowly she turned to him pressing the data pad against his chest and returning her head to her hands.   
Chakwas had written the Report, it was from Shepard's most recent check up.  
Everything was in order, Bones healed, blood pressure normal everything from the Lazerus project still functioning. Down the bottom was a small note.  
He placed the Data Pad to one side, returning his attention to her.   
She looked up, no tears but her eyes pools of sadness.  
"I didn't think you wanted kids." He asked gently, no knowing how to broach the problem.   
It was saddening to discover that they couldn't pass on their lineage to any biological offspring. Yet this like everything was weighed against the feeling of her death. Every time he would choose Shepard, if she was alive and safe. He was happy.  
She swallowed "You don't think about these things until your population is decimated."   
He pulled her in close holding her tight her head rested against his chest.  
"I am death." She whispered "No life will come from me. I am destruction."  
***  
Sitting on the shuttle back finally docking at the citadel, Wrex shifted uncomfortably next to her.  
She laughed, the large red Krogan hated sitting still, normally she would sympathise.  
"Wrex calm down." She told him. He shrugged and relaxed back in his seat.  
"I don't like the council at the best of times, and now I have to ask them for something."  
"Your only seeing if the resources are available." Corrected Shepard "It should be open and shut, after all they owe us."  
The large alien chuckled next to her "They owe you." He clapped her on the back in a friendly manor "Good thing your Clan Urdnot."  
The ship rocked, the magnetic couplings locking on holding the shuttle for docking.  
"Cant believe they gave you a desk job." He muttered standing up reading to leave."You should be fighting Thresher Maw, obliterating enemies, not writing reports."  
"And if I didn't have this desk job I wouldn't have been able to spend the last three months battling the Maw, or helping you and the Female clans rebuild." She smiled "Now is the time for Diplomacy, not battle."  
"Thank the stars for Tuchanka, where there is always time for battle." He exclaimed.

Wrex appeased, council dealt with Shepard decided to take a quick visit to the Spector Office on the presidium Embassies. Silently the door slid open, she was still expecting the groan and grind she got from everything thing on the Krogan's home planet. The long cold steal hall way curved lazily away from her. Walking quietly down its expanse she rounded the corner to see some one was already hard at work, pouring over data.  
The uniform was Alliance Issue, blue and black form fitted against caramel skin.  
"Excuse me soldier." She began, keeping her tone coy. "You wouldn't happen to know where a girl could find a devilishly handsome Major do you?"  
Turning Kaidan answered "A specific one? or you just woke up this morning with a craving?"  
She laughed missing his humour, missing him most of all. Throwing her arms around his neck she kissed him.   
"A little bit of both." She said softly "Now, what is it you say? Shall we go for a quick drink?"


End file.
